How Effective are Social Signals?

[ArcticPanda]

If there's anything I've learnt about SEO the past month is that a lot of it is personal opinion.

Guy #1 may say that Web 2.0's are the most effective method of ranking your website
While guy #1 will say that Social Signals are the key!

Does anyone have any input on this, with actual backed up evidence?

How effective are social signals? Is there any point in driving them to your website, other than the obvious fact that they give social proof to visitors? Do they benefit your Google Ranking?

 

[Tilko]

Well I'm not 100% they work but I've been getting a lot of social signals to domain.com/innerpage.
The funny thing was my domain.com/innerpage was ranking for my brand anchor while homepage was nowhere close.
homepage had no links, no social signals. Inner page had NO link but it did have social signals.
Based on that I think it is working. Can't say 100%.

 

[Hawkster]

I don't think anyone actually knows for sure, from what ive seen more people think it has no impact on ranking, some think it does, either way social signals are a good thing, because it helps make your backlink profile look more natural.

 

[T0NYS]

Do not consider social signals as the magic hand behind the nice serp rankings , but more than that social signals indeed do play a major role to make those links built more reliable , contributing by adding trust to the site actually

I mean content is being shared on different social media platforms and hence it's attracting the webmasters's attention that "for sure" will link to your site , judging here on the quality of the content being shared

Not sure if you got my point ,

 

[beamrays12]

Social signals are helpful but not quite effective.

 

[Berkeli]

the only thing effective is 'Naturality' of your backlinks.. a site with 1000's of web 2.0s ought to have some social signals

 

[vikiendu]

use it to diversifying purpose only.

Links are the factor. If you can rank a website, you rank by backlinking, not by social signals

Again, links only.

 

[Tilko]

I wonder how many of you actually made an experiment with social signals.

 

[Finez]

Why not get the both of em' ?

 

[Penumbra]

It's better to use them, they will not provide you with ranking but they are there as a trust factor.

 

[ArcticPanda]

Okay, so the majority of us think that Social Signals don't directly effect SERPs. But, they make your backlinks seems more "realistic".

Let's change the question slightly. Out of the various forms of backlinks (Web 2.0, Blog Comments etc), what do you rate as the most effective? Or do you think a good mix of them all are the best bet (Follow AND No follow)

 

[ThopHayt]

Google straight out came out and stated that social signals are not directly part of its ranking algo. Do they carry other benefits? Most likely. But do they carry link juice like a web2.0? I doubt that.

 

[BloggerTonmoy]

Yes, It's still now Green effect to Ranking. Google published they don't give value but It's still Green signal to rank on SERP !

 

[Tilko]

Yes, It's still now Green effect to Ranking. Google published they don't give value but It's still Green signal to rank on SERP !

Always do the opposite of what "Google" is saying lel
"Google" said SAPE links aren't working, SPAM is not working, PBNs will be hunt down yet there are people ranking and banking

 

[SEO FOX]

Social signals are not effective mate but very useful to get lot of visitors

 

[back2basics]

While i'm not at all savvy with SEO or try to rank anything beyond installing yoast on my site, i totally focus only on social traffic, and i can tell you from having 6-10 new articles a day on the site, and mid xxx,xxx traffic from social daily, i only get maybe 1000 visitors a day from SE. Which is kind of sad for all the organic backlinks from shares, and what not. I'm sure i could be doing more to get SE traffic, but as it stands it definitely doesn't do anything for me.

 

[lightningblitz]

The testing I have done has shown me:

1. Most social signals do nothing.
2. I have had some success with real G+
3. G+ were not as effective as backlinks

Take my testing with a grain of salt. I only testing on a handful of sites. But since I do not have a process to get social signals and outsource, seeing no benefit except from real G +'s and not a huge benefit, I stopped.

If you have the process to get them extremely cheaply are they bad? I will not say that. If your site has 100K links, it should have some social shares. But I have seen nothing substantial stating they work from other SEO's I trust or from my own testing.

 

[Ambitious12]

Mix these two guys advices and add social signals on your web2.0

 

[iAuthority]

you can do with PBN and high PR sites. ofcourse web 2.0 give you powerful backinks when it combined with those PBN and high quality sites. it means web 2.0 is worked as a tier 2. and also you can go with social signals like linked in and other social media sites.

 

[classybabe]

Google doesn't give a damn about social signals. The only thing they are good for is making your site look pretty with infinite shares